by Beth Labonte
“But he’s a plastic surgeon, Josie! He doesn’t even need your money! Wasn’t that the problem?”
“You’d be surprised what people suddenly decide they need after they get close to me.”
“So, what? You’re never going to date again? Is that it? You’re just going to die a lonely old spinster? Look, honey, I know you trusted Dean and that he hurt you, but eventually you’re going to have to let somebody else in.”
“Says who?”
“Says the laws of attraction. When the right man comes along, you won’t be able to fight it. You’ll be like two wild animals. That’s how it was with your father.”
“Mom, ew.” I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to dislodge the image. Pixie whimpered on the couch beside me. Even a dog knew how wrong that was. “You know, I never did say I was going to be celibate. I just can’t have any expectations of a long-term commitment.”
“Oh, Josephine.”
“Can we please change the subject? Audrey and Randy are still coming for Thanksgiving, right?”
“Of course, they’re coming,” said Mom. “They wouldn’t miss a free meal. Maybe I should send them up your way.”
“Very funny.”
“I suppose this means I’ll have to do all the cooking again,” she sighed.
“Feel free to hire a chef.”
“It’s too late for that,” said Mom wistfully. “Maybe we should just book a cruise…”
“Or maybe you could see if Dad wants to cook.”
“Your father?”
“Yes, my father. Learning to cook might give him something to do besides wandering up and down that beach looking for coins. Plus, it would be so adorable if you two cooked Thanksgiving dinner together. You could reignite that yucky animal attraction you speak of.” Pixie flipped over onto her back, wiggling around until I rubbed her soft brown and white belly.
“Oh, that reminds me, I ordered a new patio set from Pottery Barn.”
“How does that have anything to do with what I said?”
“You mentioned animals which reminded me of the zebra print pillows. You’ll still be down for the Fourth of July, won’t you? Or were you planning to grill up burgers and dogs for the townsfolk?”
“You’re becoming very funny in your old age,” I said, standing up and walking over to the back windows. A flock of turkeys strolled out of the woods, pecking around by the edge of the river. I’ve seen moose out there many times—actual moose, not the guy that owns the mini mart, which would be weird. Bears, too. My view of the river was one of the reasons I’d bought this house.
“Of course, I’ll be down for the Fourth,” I said, turning away from the window. “Is Dad around? Can you put him on?”
“Sweetheart,” said Dad, coming on the line a moment later. “I still can’t believe we won’t be seeing you for Thanksgiving! Are you sure we can’t come down and help?”
“No!” I said. If it was only my father who came, I wouldn’t mind. But he would most certainly bring along everybody else, which would defeat half the purpose. I tried to soften my tone. “It’s fine, Dad. It’s only going to be a few people, if anybody even shows up at all.”
“Well, okay,” he said, sounding disappointed. “Let me know if anything changes. We don’t keep much of a schedule around here. We can be up in a jiffy!”
“I will,” I said. “Definitely.” We chatted for a few more minutes before he put Mom back on the line.
“I have to go now, Mom. I need to stop by the local newspaper office to place the ad for my dinner.”
“Can’t you do that sort of thing online?” she asked.
“Not in Autumnboro. That’s part of its charm.”
“Don’t tell me they have a little boy who runs around shouting ‘Extra! Extra!’?”
“That would be so adorable!” I said, putting one hand on my chest as I pictured him roaming up and down Main Street. The tourists would love it, and it might distract from the shoddy quality of the writing. Maybe I’d suggest it while I was over there. “I’ll talk to you later, Mom. Love you!”
“You’ll never meet a man in that town!” she shouted as I hung up the phone.
Chapter 7
The Autumnboro Times office was jammed into a small space between the senior center and The Soapy Gourd Laundromat. I pulled open the wooden door and stepped inside. The office was mostly quiet, except for the sound of a Zumba class coming through the wall on one side, and the chugging of washing machines on the other. A woman sat at a desk near the front of the office, staring intently at her computer. She had a pencil tucked behind her ear and several coffee cups on her desk, and seemed to be hard at work on a local news story. Seated across from her was a man with a similar setup, although, from the way he was clicking his mouse, I was pretty sure he was playing Minesweeper. They both ignored me. Further back in the office was a young man—he almost looked like a teenager from where I stood—lounging back in his chair, feet up on his desk. As soon as he noticed me, he shot up. A Rubik’s cube tumbled out of his hands and onto the floor.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Yes, hi,” I said. “I’d like to place an ad?”
“Sure thing,” he said. “Come on back.”
I walked past the other two employees—one of whom was, in fact, playing Minesweeper—and sat down in the empty chair beside the ancient wooden desk. I picked up one of his business cards. Lee Moriarty, Advertising.
“Moriarty,” I said, slipping the card into my purse. “Any relation to Moose?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s my uncle. My mom told me if I didn’t stay out of trouble and find myself a job by the end of the summer, I’d have to go work for Uncle Kyle at the mini mart. You’d better believe I grabbed this gig right quick.” Lee fumbled around inside his desk, looking for a pen. Then he opened a drawer and pulled out what looked like a handwritten cheat sheet. He took a deep breath and started reading from the top. “Okay, first step. Name?”
“Josie Morgan.”
He started to write it down, then paused and looked up at me. “Why do I know that name? Did we go to high school together?”
“Probably not. I’m slightly older than you. Maybe you know me from Pumpkin Everything? I’m the owner.” I straightened up a bit in my chair, still absurdly proud every time I said it.
“Nah, that place is for old ladies,” he said, shaking his head and looking back at his notepad. He finished writing down my name, spelling it with a d and two e’s, before I corrected him. “Okay, step two…”
“Isn’t there a form I could just fill out?” I asked.
“There is not,” he said loudly, glancing at the woman near the front of the office. She glanced back at him and rolled her eyes. “My high school newspaper was more advanced than this rag, but they don’t want to take advice from a teenager. Anyway”—he cleared his throat—"what’s the ad for?”
“It’s an invitation to a free Thanksgiving dinner for anybody that needs a place to go. It’s going to be held at the United Parish, here in Autumnboro, at one o’clock. On Thanksgiving Day, obviously. You can play around with the wording to make it sound good. You get the idea.”
“Got it,” said Lee. “When do you want it to run?”
“Soon,” I said. “Can it possibly fit in this week’s paper?”
Lee started laughing and tilting back in his chair. “Of course, it can fit. What else do you think we’ve got going on around here in Dullsville?” He motioned to the nearly empty office and, I assumed, the entire town beyond the door.
“If this town is so dull, what are you still doing here?” I teased. “Why didn’t you go off to college?” Lee had a slight resemblance to his uncle—just around the eyes—and a familiar big, black tumbler on his desk. Someone in the Moriarty family must have been handing those things out for Christmas.
Lee snorted. “You sound like my uncle Kyle. I pretty much scraped through high school.” He righted his chair and tapped his pen against the desk. “And that was with a bunch
of teachers breathing down my neck, keeping me on track. Send me off to college, unsupervised?” He paused as he blew out a breath, flapping his lips. “You’re just asking for trouble. It’s not like I’m dumb or anything. I just need a tight leash. At least that’s what my mom says.”
“But your uncle thinks you should go?” That was surprising.
“He’s got faith in me,” said Lee, shrugging. “Don’t ask me why. I guess it’s because he doesn’t have any kids of his own to bug. He’s always on my case to make something of myself.” He air-quoted the words.
“Nothing wrong with that,” I said. “You know, you could always live at home and commute to college? That way your family could keep an eye on you. My friend Kit did that, and now he owns The Autumnboro Inn.”
Lee looked at me like I had a giant, warty gourd growing out of my head. “You think I want to run an inn?”
“That’s not what I meant. You could study whatever you wanted! Don’t just write off college because your mom doesn’t think you can handle it. What are you interested in?”
It was sort of funny that I was so staunchly promoting college. I mean, I’d gone. I had a bachelor’s degree in sociology, and worked for two years at a nonprofit down in Nashua, providing services to families in need. I loved it and I would have happily stayed on even after I’d won the lottery, but things became too difficult. My co-workers mostly stopped talking to me, and when they did, it was to make a snide remark about how much money I had and why I was still working at a place like that. Personally, I hadn’t felt like I’d changed at all. I could still relate to everybody I worked with. I was still me, after all. But they hadn’t felt the same. Plus, I had Mom in my ear, also asking why I wanted to work when I could just veg out with them. Eventually, I wrote the nonprofit a huge check, and I quit. Then Dean came along. Then Autumnboro. I don’t exactly use my college degree these days, but I’m always glad that I have it.
“I don’t really know what I’m interested in,” said Lee, looking around the office. Not this, I can tell you that much.” The man sitting at the other desk gave him a dirty look.
“Well, there must be something,” I said, resting my elbow on his desk and putting my chin in my hand. “If you had to pick a career, any career, what would it be?”
“Were you, like, a guidance counselor in another life?” asked Lee, looking at me quizzically.
“Sorry.” I laughed. “I just like to talk. And I love meeting new people. You’re new people.”
“Lucky me,” said Lee, picking up his Rubik’s cube and spinning a few of the sides around. “Okay, well, I do kind of like the idea of teaching.”
“Really? After what you just told me about high school?”
He nodded. “Those teachers that helped me were pretty cool. I’d be in an even worse job than this if I hadn’t finished high school. Plus, you know, you get the summers off.”
“I do know.” I smiled. “My dad used to be a teacher, and he always joked that the best part of teaching was June, July, and August. I think you should go for it. The world could certainly use some good teachers.”
“Yeah, but how do you know I’d be good at it?” asked Lee. “There’s a pretty high chance I’d stink. Then I’d really be letting Uncle Kyle down.”
“Give yourself some credit!” I said. “And even if you did stink at it, I’m sure your uncle would be proud of you just for trying.” I wasn’t totally sure if that was true, but I had to assume Moose had a heart somewhere in his burly chest.
“Maybe,” said Lee. “I just want to get out of this town someday, one way or another. Even if it’s by moving to Summerboro. I hear it’s lovely in the summer.” He’d been working on the Rubik’s cube the entire time he’d been talking, and with one last spin, solved it. He plunked it down in front of me.
“A friend of mine lives in Summerboro,” I said, picking up the cube and inspecting it from all sides, impressed. “Believe it or not, I moved to Autumnboro from somewhere else. I love that it’s small and quiet here, and that everyone knows everyone. Plus, I have wild animals in my backyard. How cool is that?”
“Yeah,” he said, taking a swig from his black tumbler. “It’s a real treat. Hang on while I write you up an invoice.”
I sat quietly while he filled out a form with a carbon copy attached. All of a sudden, he stopped writing and looked up at me.
“Josie Morgan,” he said slowly, his eyes widening. “Now I remember your name! You’re the lottery winner!” The other two employees snapped their heads around to look at me.
“You got me.” I shrugged. Now that he’d figured out who I was, he was probably going to add a few zeroes onto that invoice. That was okay. I’d been thinking about making an anonymous donation to the newspaper as soon as I’d walked in and seen the state of the carpets.
“Holy crap,” he breathed, resuming the slouchy, laid-back position he was in when I’d arrived. He put his feet up on his desk and picked up the Rubik’s cube, tossing it in the air. “That was a ton of money, lady. My uncle, he said you have more money than God and no clue what to do with it. No offense. And—hold on a second—” He sat up again, slamming the Rubik’s cube back down on his desk. “You’re telling me you won all that money and you moved here? Dude, you should be in Tahiti or Thailand or something!”
I snorted. “I’m staying far away from Thailand, trust me.”
“Yeah? Why?”
“Long story.” Amy had already forced part of the Dean saga out of me the other day. I wasn’t about to lay it all on Moose’s nephew in the middle of a newspaper office so it could end up on tomorrow’s front page. “So, Lee, are we all set with the ad?”
“All set. I’ll email you a proof. But, what have you done with all that dough? You must have done some crazy traveling before you ended up here. Please tell me you did some crazy traveling before you ended up here.”
I opened my mouth and then closed it again.
“Oh, geez,” said Lee.
“I’ve been to a few places,” I said defensively, twisting my hair into a ponytail. “But now, I’m sort of…scared to travel. The flying, the hotels…it’s not really my cup of tea. I like it here.”
Lee just stared at me with pity in his eyes, which was new. I couldn’t say that I liked it any more than jealousy
“Dude,” he said, “you’re a gazillionaire. Even if your grandfather founded this lame town, you gotta get out of here at least for a vacation. Did you know that in Bora Bora you can stay in a hut that’s like on the ocean? You could afford three of those things.”
“Why would I possibly need three huts?” I asked, standing up. “Besides, Bora Bora has sharks, stingrays, and barracudas. Do you know what would happen to my money if I got eaten by a barracuda?”
“Your family would inherit it?”
“Exactly. Have you eaten lunch yet? Can I get you a sandwich? Or maybe a Maple Sugar Crush?”
“What the heck’s a Maple Sugar Crush?”
“It’s a frozen drink from The Shaky Maple.”
“I’ve never set foot in that place. I like Dunkin. Did you know some old guy drove through the window last year? I had to switch to Starbucks for, like, a month.”
“You should shop local. The Shaky Maple’s great, and I’ve heard the Maple Sugar Crush is amazeballs.”
“You’re too old to be saying amazeballs, lady. But, sure. I could go for a coffee. Thanks.”
“No problem,” I said, heading for the door. “Back in a jiffy.”
As I stepped outside, I tried for a moment to see the town from Lee’s perspective. Sure, it was small, and there wasn’t too much going on in the way of news. But he didn’t have a clue what it was like to be me. Having this sort of money was unfathomable, as it was to most people. Sure, it might seem surprising, and maybe a bit pitiful, that I’d never done much traveling. But I had my reasons. I could get by without travel or dating. Believe me, it was a small price to pay for being a gazillionaire.
Chapter 8
&nbs
p; When I walked into Pumpkin Everything on Friday morning, Tom had a newspaper in his hand, and a worried look on his face.
“There you are,” he said, as soon as I’d opened the door. “Thank goodness.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, letting Pixie off her leash, and hurrying over to where he was leaning against the counter. I cringed as a thought occurred to me. “The life-sized Santa didn’t get delivered early, did it?”
“The life-sized what?”
“Never mind. What’s wrong?”
He shook the newspaper. “I know you said you wanted to host a community dinner, and I know I said it was a good idea, but Josie…do you think this is wise? You’re going to get quite a turnout.”
Quite a turnout? I’d almost forgotten that my ad was supposed to run today in The Autumnboro Times. I grabbed the newspaper out of his hands and scanned the page until I found it.
ALONE FOR THE HOLIDAYS? DON’T BE!
JOIN US FOR A FREE THANKSGIVING DINNER AT
THE UNITED PARISH OF AUTUMNBORO
ALL ARE WELCOME! NOBODY TURNED AWAY!
DATE: NOVEMBER 25
TIME: ONE O’CLOCK
“Okay,” I said, not quite understanding what the problem was. “That looks fine to me. Maybe a little dull. I thought I told Lee to play around with the wording?” I sighed and shook my head.
“Josie, darling, this isn’t The Autumnboro Times,” said Tom. “It’s the Portsmouth Herald. I picked up a copy this morning because Barbara said there was a coupon inside to Applebee’s.”
“What?”
The Portsmouth Herald circulated way, way, way south of here. Like, down by Kittery. Oh, Lee. What did you do? I dropped the newspaper on the counter and grabbed the business card I’d pinned to the bulletin board. I punched in the number.
